Lee Weldon News Today

Preliminary scoping just to see how far down the budget we would be able to get . So in march we would like to come back with the plan okay with the 15. 5 Million Dollars this is the number of playgrounds we think we could do in the first effort and the schedule for those. I think the other main piece of the feedback from the Task Force Committee which was mostly at the last meeting that we rebrand this program and while failing playgrounds sells gets you votes for bonds its not necessarily the ...

Beautifully renovated playground in the sites that we have, but we do have this pot of money were hoping to leverage so the short answer is there is more to come on that. Yeah, my only point being i dont like doing things twice so if we mobilize the resources for say any one of the tier one parks, whether we could maybe leverage that think bigger and use the opportunity that we have to expand parks, improve parks beyond the scope that we originally imagined. Again commissioner and dawn if you ha...

Renovations that we did, so i want to make sure were going to invest considerable amount of money and a lot of different resources that we have these parks for as long as possible so i would like that addressed in the future efforts, and to continue planning with these quote unquote failing parks. Commissioner i think its a great question and in march we can come back with more detail but there are two questions embedded in your question. One is what is the current replacement cycle for assets a...

And so finally i think that the what we have before us in terms of a recommendation captures three things they think are important going through the process. One that the recommendations represent where both highest in need in terms of conditions but highest opportunity with regard to leverage of resources is represented here. Also the geographic kind of distribution across our city is also i think well represented, not the entire city, but i do think well represented and something that dawn sai...

More expensive and not the budget at lafayette and had support from others. This will depend on leveraging the dollars with philanthropic sources or grant sources and we are working on that. Lisa bransten from the team is very involved in that. This is something of passion ate interest of the Parks Alliance and will depend on timing and the additional funding that we have. I think we should focus before we grab streets and acquire land and build new parks i think we should focus on delivering th...

Lily wong right now they have been around for over a decade in some places closer to two and Merced Heights and no one has been here in a super long time and so some of those are functional still. You can still play on them, but the trends and in design and whennure compare the quality of those play structures to Mission Playground on valencia street its a dramatic before and after so we can certainly talk about what i think a replacement cycle should look like. I think the department has learne...

At bo decker for example at lily wong right now they have been around for over a decade in some places closer to two and Merced Heights and no one has been here in a super long time and so some of those are functional still. You can still play on them, but the trends and in design and whennure compare the quality of those play structures to Mission Playground on valencia street its a dramatic before and after so we can certainly talk about what i think a replacement cycle should look like. I thi...

Reiterate or under score that dawn did mention. First the staff. I would agree with dawn having participated in a number of these process and ones that had the passion and commitment to parks and open space that could potentially be therefore very contentious and this was not for a number of reasons. The first of which in my mind was the incredible Staff Support and analysis that went into preparation that dawn referenced so again thank you to dawn and the entire team, and then secondly the mast...

Money than reducing spending because the choices are harder and this was done with facts and the community and i think the outcomes are very, very credible and i really do want to thank dawn and stacy and the entire Steering Committee for their participation in it. I ulc want to thank the San Francisco Parks Alliance which has taken up playgrounds as a cause and i cant think of a more noble one. I know matt ogrady is here and i want to thank them and the Parks Alliance board for their interest. ...

Open Forum letters to the editor for Thursday, July 6, 2022.